I love that postcard, Julia99. It is an illustration of the Great Eastern, a mammoth ocean liner constructed by Isambard Brunel in 1859. (I'm a real maritime fanatic, both as historian and collector.) Almost 700 feet long, powered by sails, enormous paddle-wheels and a propellor, she was originally designed to carry 5,000 First and Second Class passengers in very opulent accommodations (sofas in the staterooms were convertible to bathtubs!) from England to India, her size allowing for so much coal to be carried in her bunkers that she needed to stop only once along the way. She never made one trip to India, instead being used to ferry passengers across the Atlantic. Despite her size and luxury, incredible for the 1860's, she was a failure; very few would sail in her, ironically intimidated by her grandeur. One passenger who appreciated her was Jules Verne, who wrote several stories concerning a massive ship based on the Great Eastern. After several seasons of money-losing passenger crossings, she was withdrawn from service, her magnificent interiors removed and replaced by holds filled with the first transatlantic cable to connect the two continents telegraphically. She was then eventually scrapped and forgotten, a ship a half-century ahead of her time.
Gerard
